


Killing Silence

by Euregatto



Series: RVB one-shots [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Manipulative Relationship, Mental Breakdown, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Warning: Potential Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 10:27:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4784024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euregatto/pseuds/Euregatto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felix breaks her until there's nothing left, but she still destroys him in the end.</p><p> </p><p>Update 9/28: changed work title</p>
            </blockquote>





	Killing Silence

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I write really weird stories. This is one of them.

The canyon’s end opens like a ravenous maw beneath her feet and she wonders if the tide is beckoning her to drop. There’s nothing distinctly threatening about it, only that she drifts into a subconscious void of apathy when she’s given time to reflect in the water’s surface. He’s poised at her side, absently staring off into the iridescent mandarin of the sunset, seemingly captivated by the glaring rim of the corona despite the starkly indifferent sigh that escapes his throat. A vast division rests between them, an invisible invincible wall, generating as a breath subsumed by crashing, roaring waves and screeching, rushing wind.

She has a way with people that is unmatched by the natural deconstruction of worlds, eyes that analyze souls like ravines that gorge into a crueler, colder darkness, lips that fracture the unyielding barriers of abysmal sea walls to regurgitate screams. Yet with him, she’s met with silence. An abhorrent, surreal quiet that undermines his method of manipulation and his snarky cache of words.

He’s not who he says he is. But she has no one else she can trust.

“Are you done having a fit now?”

She tightens her grasp on the assault rifle, shakes her head. “I was never angry.”

“I’m sure Nessa,” Felix replies with a casual roll of his shoulders. They audibly crack. Similar to how a ribcage collapses and punctures organs, expelling viscera across the plains of battlefields, exposing hidden secrets and miscellaneous memories locked in the heart now vomiting blood out of the chest piece. “Well, stay here then. Mull over your hatred of the feds. I’m going.”

She follows intently, drags in his wake. Like a wounded animal that trusts the hunter to save it.

  

 

 

 

“Doesn’t it fascinate you?” he asks her with the feigned air of innocence, talking about some miniscule matter while his fingers work her open with expert precision, has her mewling when he presses on all the right spots. There’s something alluringly dangerous about his voice that makes her shudder when he lowers his tone, yet she’s found it in herself to glimpse it over and accept him into her army. Needs his help regardless of her opinions on the matter. The pay could, perhaps, be significantly better but if he’s bothered by it he certainly doesn’t complain.

“What – _ah_ , _fuck_ – what does?”

“How those soldiers could have caused such a problem for big name corporations. I haven’t heard of such glorious disasters since the Project Freelancer files.”

She thinks this could be part of his unscripted contract, allowing them to rut in the silence of the night and defile her bedsheets. But he’s never explicitly mentioned accepting this as any form of _anything_ , not a thank you or a defrayal. He’s blissfully congenial like that. Allows her to exploit his jovial nature and easy-centered constitution with a simple side-ways glance, and in return, she doesn’t pull away when he raps on her door in the marrow of the night. Perhaps this arrangement has never been an annuity to him, simply a bonus.

It’s fucked up, she supposes.

“That’s why I recruited them.”

“A smart decision. They’ve given your army a new hope.”

She should comment on that, how it sounds like a forced truth, but he’s suddenly between her thighs and any recollection of a coherent statement is consumed by blanking ecstasy.

 

 

 

  

Betrayal comes as no surprise, yet it lingers on the back of her tongue, behind bruised lips that he’s feverishly kissed. Betrayal comes as no shock, yet it rots away at her insides, where he’s thrusted until she’s screamed his name and he’s prided himself on splitting her apart at the seams. Betrayal comes as no consternation, yet it feasts on the corpses of her soldiers at her feet and rends her bone to dust to gnaw at the morose harbored so deeply within she feels the shards passing through her veins, catching on every ruptured memory, every derailed scream.

Just like hiring him, betrayal comes at a price.

Maybe they’ve always known, the simulation soldiers from Valhalla. Tucker, in particular. She might not care what they think of her now, if to them she’s incompetent, maladroit, a fucking _whore_ , for letting the enemy get comfortable between her legs while he spoon-fed information to his other employers.

And it doesn’t matter. Because in the end, she’s nothing more than collateral damage in the grand scheme of a cataclysmic war.

A puppet on a stage.

  

 

 

 

He’s a dark figure in the rain, unfazed by the chill, standing on the precipice of spring. She’s only ever seen him in the brilliant glaze of the sun or the elegant slopes of the moon, and the bracket of shadows between the hovering clouds reflect off his armor with a bereaving, baleful quality.

He hasn’t come to hurt her. He’s never—(physically)—hurt her. Still he’s staring down the glare of her gun.

She’s blistering with anger but instead of killing him – right _here_ , right _there_ , pumping lead into his body until there’s nothing left but the same holes he’s left within her – she lets him _talk_. Suave and antipathy and borderline victorious. “ _Nessa_.” Uses her name with that serpentine tone. Rocks her spine with chills like scraping skeletal fingers. “You wouldn’t shoot _me_ ”—steps closer and she withdraws, backing against the wall—“you wouldn’t shoot your dear ol’ Felix. Would you?”

She’s shaking, contorting adrenaline and fear, and conflicting anticipation with giddiness. He pushes down her weapon, grins with predatory glee beneath a visor blocked by obsidian and orange paint. From this proximity she notes every scratch, every chip in the finish, the curves of the head piece like the structure of snake fangs, baring wide and dangerous and vicious. Doesn’t fight as he disconnects it from his suit and drops it carelessly into the sodden dirt. Doesn’t register that he’s sliding off her own helmet until it’s impacted the ground. She’s jostled by the acute thump, is pressed pliantly to the structure with her hands balled into fists, could fight her way out. If she wants to.

But she doesn’t.

“Fuck _you_ , you’re _not_ – you’re not _mine_ , I don’t _want_ someone like _you_.”

His kiss is as potent as ever, tastes like ice and ash and venom. Slides his tongue along the rim of her teeth. Navigates her arms above her head and locks her wrists in place with one hand, slips his other between her thighs. Settles against the familiarity of her heated core. Presses up to earn a gasp despite the thick material of the thermal suit dividing them.

“I’m sorry to hear that Nessa,” he says, _hisses_ , strokes her firmly. “Because you’re certainly _mine_.”

“No one’s allowed to own me, _especially_ you.”

“So leave,” he mutters under his breath, trailing kisses along the length of her jawline and stimulating her clit with the undersides of his knuckles. Her legs are parting to take advantage of the angle. “Push me off, walk away. I’m not going to stop you.”

The austerity of the situation hits her like a wave but she’s too far gone, drifting into waters far beyond the range of her sanity. For a leader with a heart of gold she has the self-control of an animal in heat, wild and fervent and desperate. Can’t resist him, the engulfing hate and the animosity and the rage, the prospect of controlling and being controlled. Lets him bite the caramel skin of her neck, recalls the dire cravings of fulfillment. Her body yearns for him, his touch, her mind wails as it grasps for the trigger switch of her will.

“Take it off,” she demands and holds his bister gaze. She’s broiling. Crumbling. Going to regret this later, always does, always has.

“Take what off?”

_“All of it.”_

His grin is malicious, _haunting_. “I knew you’d give in,” he jeers. “You always do.”

  

 

 

 

He thrusts up, matching her persistent pace, doesn’t mind that the wall is straining on his muscles as he supports her or that she’s bitten him so hard there’s swellings blossoming across the expanse of his alabaster skin. There’s privacy under the slope of the roof and the air is thick with perspiration that isn’t their own. He almost wants her soldiers to witness _this_ , witness their idolized heroine’s tragic slip from grace as she ruts beneath the enemy. Is reduced to nothing more than a broken shell that gasps and pants and cries out when he hits her sweet spot.

“Say it.” Clasps her hips, drives up and drives in and drives her over the edge. “You _want_ to say it, I want to _hear_ it.”

“You’re mine,” she seethes, digs her nails into his chest and rakes them downwards, clawing up curls of skin, drawing blood. “You’re _mine_ , Felix. And don’t you ever fucking forget that.”

Makes her come for the fifth or sixth or sixteenth time, a surfeit amount by any count but the memories are blurred like graphite that gets swiped across paper by the ridge of a palm. Makes her collapse into a shivering, sobbing mess racking with tremors of pleasure and repugnance. He allows her only this one lapsing second to breathe and dives into her again, picking up the same tempo, the same hard, determined pace. She messes with his hair, marks up his back. Surrenders to him.

He wants to ensure that she’ll feel every interstice in her bones, every minute pang when she walks, wants her to regret this long after the bruises have faded.

When he breaks her, she won’t be able to find all the pieces.

 

 

 

  

And she doesn’t.

She spends an elapsed amount of time as a languishing foundation of glass on the floor of her room, elated by Doyle comforting her without judgment, knows he would think differently if he had been aware of her disgrace. Equates her despair with stress and her tears with vehemence. She’s a pathetic pile of rot and shame, despairing by virtue, toppling by nature, wilting by reason of insanity. Finds little comfort in how Doyle holds her gently. It’s contrast to Felix, his words tearing her asunder like popping ribs free from a corpse, his malign sense of desperation and masochistic satisfaction.

Doyle’s kiss doesn’t fit right either, tastes unfamiliar; she accepts it anyway. Copacetic, for now, an affable change of pace.

But nothing comes of it later. Not when she’s occupied with scouring her marred body, her tainted soul, for the stardust and pieces of debris Felix has left behind in place of her trust, her cognizance. Her mind is a palisade of contumely words to describe her own deplorable existence.

Sometimes she fits a piece into place, remembers how to laugh, accepts food and water and occasionally rests longer than a few hours at a time.

But it’s worthless. She doesn’t repair herself for her own sake. It’ll just give Felix a sadistic gaiety to deconstruct her all over again, starting at her core.

  

 

 

 

She should have known he would be incensed by jealousy.

Doyle comes through one night to check in on her, and by the next morning he’s ruffled around the edges with splurges of bruises outlining his neck. And that, _that_ makes Felix angry. She doesn’t bother to question how he’s managed to find out about her sleeping with Doyle but she isn’t all that bewildered when he shows up in her room in the middle of the night the following week, seated in the encompassing shadows when she enters from an extensive meeting with the inventory troopers.

She could fight him, has the home field advantage. Doesn’t even flinch when he storms over to her and slams her back against the wall.

“You _fucked_ him.”

“It’s not your place to get upset, Felix.”

“I’ll get as fucking upset as I goddamn very well _please_ -!” His attempt at intimidating her backfires. Because she’s the one kissing him, hastily stripping their armor, and he’s falling into it, chuckles maniacally as she submits to his pinning and his grinding and the marks he leaves on her skin.

Has them both on her haphazardly made bed in a matter of minutes.

“Does _he_ touch you like this?” comes the bitter hiss as he works two fingers into her, steered mad by her groans and the envy and his own desire. “Does _he_ drive you wild with lust? Does _he_ ”—rubs his palm roughly over her clit and she orgasms with a shuddering, heated moan—“fuck you senseless and make you scream his name?”

She’s torrid and panting and he fits inside of her with ease. Feels right and wrong and so fucking _good_. He doesn’t start slowly, never takes her gently; instead drives into her with force, relishing in her resounding cries, in how the pain registers as pleasure. Pins her arms above her head when she digs into the old scars on his back. She arches up and rolls her hips and spreads her legs to feel every inch of him, every vengeful thrust, the constriction of her wrists, the dominant growling in his throat.

“Say it, _Nessa_.”

She grits her teeth, loses herself in him. “You’re mine.”

“That’s not enough.”

 _It’s never enough,_ or he wouldn’t return to her again and again and again, seeking her warmth and her solitude and her seething, simmering hate. “And I’m yours,” she utters, wiggles free to grasp the sheets with one hand, pull him closer with the other. They fit together, in a sickening way. Speaks again with renewed determination. “You’re mine and I’m yours.”

“And don’t you ever forget that,” he snaps as she stiffens and screams his name and nearly puts holes in the bed in the midst of the intensity. “Don’t you _ever_ fucking forget that.”

 

 

 

  

The aftermath is an extensive, agonizing silence. He’s rarely stayed, would always get distracted, dress and leave. Unlike Doyle, who insisted on holding her close in the waxing twilight hours, he doesn’t like to get close. She anticipates his leave, expects him to stalk out wordlessly, yet his back is compressed against hers and he’s too fucking exhausted to make more than an incoherent grunt every few minutes. Teetering on the edge of sleep, diverging from his initial plan to ruin her, fuck with her head a little, and leave briskly.

He feels the bed shift, she’s turning to him. So he faces her too. Droops one arm lazily over her waist, catches her brilliant, curious gaze. It bothers him. Burrows under his skin.

She’s enjoying their sick charade. There’s nothing left for him to break.

 

  

 

 

Doyle gravitates away from her after her outburst during Doc’s therapy session. She should apologize, but her loathing is subsuming her typical even-headed temper.

She’s not even sure it’s Felix’s fault.

 

 

 

  

Doyle’s gone and she blames herself. Even though she had pleaded with every known god she could recall he still sets off the reactor, he still _dies_. He is reduced to nothing more than a memory that she’s tarnished with their arguments, with her reprehensible cruelty, with his goddamn cowardice in the face of war. She clings to the whisper of his lips on hers, his benevolent nature, his meek hands on her hips, her thighs, her chest. It’s nothing more than an echo, dwindling like entire constellations under the cataclysm of a supernova.

Whatever part of her that had been recollected by him, jimmied into place and cemented along the seams, it’s broken again.

She’s tired of trying to fix herself.

 

 

 

  

She sees Felix again, shortly after her speech to the troops, on the outskirts of crash site Bravo. Of all the events that could unfold – a firefight, a fuck, a showdown – nothing happens in the brink of elongated quiet. But she does, however, punch him square in the face when he attempts to speak, cracking his visor, sending him stumbling back.

Demands that he leave in a tone so uncharacteristically frigid it almost exacerbates him. And he does walk away, wordlessly, just like every time before. His mission is already fucked to hell and she’s nothing but a trembling, lugubrious mess of a person.

His fun, his string of contrition and strife, is finally over.

He tells himself he doesn’t care.

He doesn't care.

Doesn't -

  

 

 

 

Free. She should be disenthralled from his reign of impending, twisted indignation when he dies. But her chest is emptied, a sequestered void of loneliness, a consuming pit of woe. There’s nothing left for her here, not when the war is won and Doyle is a shadow close behind, even as the armies and the cities turn to her as their leader, their new beacon of hope.

There is _nothing_ left. She masks the rot and agony and regret with courage and vigilance and ire. Can’t find it within her to shed a single tear.

Felix dies and takes the last of her with him, leaving silence in his wake.

 

 

 

 

 

~{"You and I wear the dangerous looseness of doom and find it becoming." - e.e. cummings}~

 


End file.
